Kylie McQuarrie | December 3, 2018

How Much Does Your State Love Christmas?

Do most families in your neighborhood hang the Christmas lights as soon as Halloween is over? Or is yours the only garlanded, twinkling house on the block? The answer probably depends on where you live. Some states—Washington, South Dakota, and Utah—go all-out to rock around the Christmas tree and jingle all the way. Alaska, Hawaii, and Florida? Not so much.

Curious how your state stacks up to the rest in terms of decking the halls? Some intense data-combing by the GetCenturyLink team yielded some surprising results—check them out on our Christmas spirit map below! The top 10 states are marked with a Christmas tree, and the bottom 10 states are marked with a Grinch.

Several popular Christmas movies were filmed in third-ranked Utah, including the 2000 live-action How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Hallmark Channel favorites like Christmas Under Wraps.

Jean Shepherd, author of A Christmas Story, grew up in Indiana (#12); Ohio (#20) hosts the Christmas Story museum—the movie was filmed in Cleveland.

Washington state came in first in overall Christmas spirit, but it ranked below average on three of the online metrics we used to create the rankings: Christmas movies, wrapping paper, and Elf on the Shelf.

Alaska may be the coldest and snowiest state, but it ranks below average in every category except one: the state ranks #3 for “gingerbread house” searches.

All but four of the bottom ten states are hot, dry, and sunny year-round; meanwhile, top-ranked Washington state receives 80 inches of snow annually.

Methodology

To determine which US states have the most Christmas spirit, the analysts at GetCenturyLink compared data in two main categories: online activity and area culture. We evaluated those categories using the ten metrics listed below and finalized our ranking by calculating the weighted average for each state across all metrics.